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9/11 and American Empire Vol. I: Intellectuals Speak Out


This is the first volume in the 2-volume "9/11 and Empire" series, inspired by David Griffin's nationally-broadcast 4/18/2005 speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sponsored by MUJCA. The second volume, co-edited by Kevin Barrett, John Cobb, and Sandra Lubarsky, is now available for pre-purchase and should be shipping by mid-October: http://www.amazon.com/11-American-Empire/dp/1566566606

9/11 and American Empire Vol. I: Intellectuals Speak Out

Olive Branch Press (2006)
http://www.interlinkbooks.com
Review: http://www.911blogger.com/node/3168

And so the Great War of Democracy ended - not with the catastrophic bang that so many had feared but with the imperceptible hum of a technological revolution. “We tried to give the Muslim world a political upgrade,” said U.S. President Jimmy McCain, son of the former Senator and a veteran of the Iraq war, on the 30th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “I guess we failed. So instead we gave ourselves an economic upgrade. I guess we succeeded.” - Niall Ferguson (1)

This epoch of Neoconservative belligerence ushered in on 9/11/2001 will not be looked upon favorably by future historians, no matter how warmly Niall Ferguson reassures us. While Ferguson dabbles in speculative fantasy, the uncomfortable task of dissecting the horror-show of 9/11 falls to those with the intestinal fortitude and perceptive knack to get the job done.

Who better to deconstruct the mythology of 9/11 than an international group of intellectuals, some currently attached to academic institutions, some not. Of the 11 contributors to Intellectuals Speak Out, 4 are Full Members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth (a group founded by Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University, and Professor James Fetzer (retired) of the University of Minnesota, Duluth), and one is an Associate Member. (I will designate them as FM-ST911 or AM-ST911 in this review.) The editors of Intellectuals Speak Out are David Ray Griffin, (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion & Theology, Claremont School of Theology & Claremont Graduate University – FM-ST911), and Peter Dale Scott (English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley – retired).

The work of American theologian Griffin is well-known to those who have bothered to examine 9/11, (and the 9/11 Commission Report), in a critical light. His first book on 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, (2004) gathered prior research from various sources and condensed the research into an alternative account of 9/11 that has won great praise from independent 9/11 researchers, but scarcely a mention in the mainstream press. His second book on 9/11, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, (late 2004) is to date the definitive critique of the 9/11 Commission Report. Again, almost completely ignored by the mainstream press. His most recent book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, applies his specialty as a theologian directly to the experience of 9/11, and has been given more coverage in mainstream media than his other books.

Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat who has put into words some of the most devastating observations about the hidden machinery that enables covert American foreign policy that you can find. He coined the phrase Deep Politics as a reference point for those who want to get beyond the metanarratives manufactured for the consumer of the 6 o’clock news. Starting with the groundbreaking (and mightily censored) The War Conspiracy (1972), he has continued with a string of investigative books; The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (in collaboration, 1976), Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (1977), The Iran-Contra Connection (in collaboration, 1987), Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (in collaboration, 1991, 1998), Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993, 1996), Deep Politics Two (from JFKLancer, 1995), and Drugs Oil and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, March 2003).

Scott and Griffin form an international base from which they branch out to include Swiss historian, Daniele Ganser, Norwegian research professor, Ola Tunander, and the second Canadian contributor, professor of philosophy and member of the Royal Society of Canada, John McMurtry (FM-ST911). The balance of the contributors to Intellectuals Speak Out are American.

In less than 250 pages, including 47 pages of endnotes and index, the reader is presented with a surprisingly panoramic view of the milieu known as 9/11 Truth, 9/11 skepticism, or, in more derogatory and dismissive terms, “9/11 conspiracy theories”.

Beginning with Griffin’s essay, 9/11, the American Empire, and Common Moral Norms, the stage is set for an examination of the broader context in which the event(s) of 9/11 took place. Griffin argues that the quest for American empire cannot be a moral project. The key to realizing this is realizing that the “War on Terror” is a façade for a much different agenda, global American hegemony. With an eruditeness that is not hampered by Griffin’s a priori belief in government complicity, he lays out his case one more time presenting evidence that suggests governmental foreknowledge and military facilitation on 9/11/2001. Griffin’s measured prose and carefully referenced publicly available data is a calm and unrushed approach to a frankly alarming hypothesis; that 9/11 was a manufactured event to initialize a violently aggressive agenda, milestones away from the original intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and the Framers of the Constitution.

The Constitution of the United States is akin to a victim of spousal abuse while under the “protection” of the current administration. Karen Kwiatkowski has been chronicling this abusive relationship with frank, merciless articles posted at Lew Rockwell.com for 3 years. Kwiatkowski first became known as an opponent of the Neoconservative agenda to a wider audience in the Robert Greenwald documentary, Uncovered: the War on Iraq. Later, she was interviewed in more detail in the Eugene Jareki film, Why We Fight, a damning indictment of the Military Industrial Complex. In her essay, Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory, Kwiatkowski reveals her extreme skepticism of the “official” narrative of 9/11, and also reveals more about her eyewitness account of the scene of the Pentagon crash;

“I would think that if a 100-plus-ton aircraft constructed of relatively lightweight materials and designed for lift, loaded with passenger seating, luggage, odds and ends and passengers, going several hundred miles an hour were to hit the Pentagon, it would cause a great deal of possibly superficial but visible damage to the wide swath of the side of the building and the entire area of impact. But I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the façade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this façade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 or 40 minutes, with the roof line remaining relatively straight.

The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large airliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon. I was not thinking at the time that it was a missile. My mindset was completely oriented toward the idea that a hijacked airliner had crashed into our building. I do remember thinking at the time how fortunate it was that the impact was diametrically opposite the offices of the secretary of defense and the service secretaries.”

Kwiatkowski is not a casual observer. A 20-year USAF employee, she retired in 2003 and quickly began to oppose the White House’s Neocon agenda, and their “evangelical politico” allies. She holds an M.A. in government (Harvard), an M.S. in science management (University of Alaska), and a doctorate in world politics from the Catholic University of America. Kwiatkowski exposes the inadequacy of the 9/11 Commission both in terms of quality of personnel and quality of product, and assesses the “official” story from various points of view, all of which lead to her conclusion that the 9/11 Commission is insufficient as an investigation on far too many levels to be considered in any way definitive, and a new investigation must be founded.

Following Kwiatkowski is the print publication of Professor Steven E. Jones’ (FM-ST911) controversial article, Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse? At first, Jones’ online paper was largely ignored, but after the founding of ST911 in early 2006, it began to draw more attention and scrutiny, as tenured and un-tenured academics began to speak out publicly in greater numbers about their issues with the “official” story, and the inadequacies of the investigations into many aspects of 9/11.

Following a public lecture in February, 2006, Jones became very much in demand for lectures and media appearances regarding his controlled demolition hypothesis (here I note that the notion of controlled demolition at the WTC preceded Jones by years, but because of his stature as a practicing physicist, media attention followed… Jones did not ‘invent’ the notion of controlled demo at the WTC). With media attention has comes scrutiny from a wide variety of sources, including, ironically, Morgan Reynolds (ex-FM-9ST911), who is also included in Intellectuals Speak Out as a contributor. The irony is doubled, as Reynolds’ chapter is on academic stifling of controversial topics like 9/11, and Jones is currently (9/24/2006) on paid leave because of his engagement with 9/11 skepticism.

Intellectuals Speak Out is not a scientific journal, but that doesn’t make Jones’ argument any less scientific. The paper has been revised several times, but Jones’ central argument remains the same;

I have called attention to glaring inadequacies in the reports funded by the US government. I have also presented multiple evidence for an alternative hypothesis. In particular, the official theory lacks repeatability in that no actual buildings, before or since 9/11, have been observed to suffer total collapse due to fire-based mechanisms. On the other hand, dozens of buildings have been completely and symmetrically demolished through the use of pre-positioned explosives. And high-temperature chemical reactions can account not only for the large pools of molten metal under buildings but also the sulfidation of structural steel. The controlled-demolition hypothesis cannot be dismissed as “junk science,” because it better satisfies tests of repeatability and parsimony. It ought to be seriously (scientifically) investigated and debated.

When considering the veracity of Jones’ observations, it doesn’t hurt to consult a variety of sources. One story to carefully consider is that of Underwriters Laboratories chief whistleblower, Kevin Ryan (AM-ST911). Ryan was an employee of UL and was privy to informal communications at UL that indicated that UL had certified the steel used in the construction of the WTC, and that the steel met and exceeded expectations at the time of the construction of the WTC. Later, UL would deny this claim, and state further that there was no evidence that any firm had certified the steel.

UL definitely did, however, conduct fire tests of floor assemblies of the type used in the WTC and found that the assemblies did not collapse after being subjected to fire, exposing the ‘pancake theory’ as a failed hypothesis. This troubled Ryan greatly, and he eventually sent an email directly to Dr. Frank Gayle at NIST, in an effort to understand what NIST was doing with the contradictory data in regards to the collapse scenario. When the email was posted far and wide on the internet, Ryan was fired. Ryan tells his story in a brief chapter that also exposes the front-men for the “official”, untenable collapse theory, and bolsters the call for a new investigation that does not rely on scientific analysis that is forced to conform to the preconceived “official” collapse theory, but instead considers all the evidence and formulates the truest collapse scenario.

Leaving speculation about controlled demolition behind, Intellectuals Speak Out then launches into a series of essays that tie American geopolitical ambitions to 9/11. Scott starts off with the essay-form of the testimony he provided to Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s 2005 congressional briefing about the 9/11 Commission Report. (2) Entitled The Background of 9/11: Drugs, Oil and US Covert Operations, Scott’s essay is a mini-history of the hidden relationships between the United States and Al-Qaeda linked Arab-Afghan fighters in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, via covert operations. A sick symbiotic relationship that carried on after the end of the Cold War.

This is followed by an analysis of the broader historical placement of 9/11 in the progression of America as a unipolar entity, intent on fostering ‘globalization’ to benefit American enterprise rather than fostering ‘democracy’. Richard Falk authors Global Ambitions and Geopolitical Wars: The Domestic Challenge which posits that although the Neoconservatives are blatant and ham-handed in their approach to fostering globalization, Clinton’s pattern of governance also tacked toward globalization, albeit in a more circuitous manner. Falk regards it as very unlikely that 9/11 happened by chance at a time when the Neocon agenda required a kick-start in the form of a new Pearl Harbor;

    It should also be noticed that several of the most influential figures
    in the neoconservative “revolution” considered themselves disciples of
    the political theorist Leo Strauss, who encouraged the belief that a
    responsible political leadership needed to deceive the citizenry to the
    extent necessary to produce benevolent policies. That is, deception is
    actually required to achieve virtuous leadership in a liberal democracy,
    because the public cannot be trusted with the truth.

When deception is part of the indoctrination of Neoconservatism, it makes it very difficult to believe anything that these ‘revolutionaries’ say. Falk is followed by John McMurtry (FM-ST911) who condemns the Neoconservative campaign for global hegemony in no uncertain terms in his essay, 9/11 and the 9/11 Wars: Understanding the Supreme Crimes. McMurtry defines America’s foreign policy post-9/11 as frankly genocidal, and exceedingly dangerous;

    That the genocide of a socialist society was going on was unspeakable in acceptable public discourse. Yet as UN Coordinator of Humanitarian Aid Denis Halliday observed, the destruction of civilian infrastructures and the bombing of villages was “in keeping with the definition of genocide in the UN convention.”15 Instead, the ground rules of discourse were that “Saddam” was “a brutal dictator who had to be replaced” and that his “invasion of Kuwait” and the “Islamic terrorists’ attack on America” were “the background causes of Iraq’s difficulties.” That Saddam himself was paid, armed, and directed by the US from obscurity into war against Iran until his 1991 invasion of Kuwait (which the US did not oppose until after it had started) were facts that did not register.16  Worse, nor did the deaths of over 1,000,000 Iraqis since 1991 by US-led bombings, depleted uranium contamination, and sanctions against repairs of free public water and electricity systems paid for by still publicly owned oil.

By refusing to engage in critical analysis of the very event of 9/11, McMurtry depicts Left media outlets like Z-Net as tacit facilitators of the most egregious aspects of Empire, something that Z-Net and other outlets would theoretically normally oppose;

Why have such facts, with such clear through-line of purpose and effect, been ignored in public and media discussion? The consensus has, in fact, crossed the poles of left–right division. Even Z-Net has been gatekeeping against the connected meaning. The taboo was encoded into identity structure across ideological oppositions. Any fact exposing the official story was a “conspiracy theory” or, to Z-Net, a “distraction.” Given the known pre-9/11 search by US geostrategic planning for a publicly saleable reason to invade central Asia and Iraq, 9/11’s occurrence was disconnected from what it provided the ideal pretext for—as explained before 9/11 by the Project for the New American Century as well as Brzezinski. No one denied that legitimation for a militarily imposed new control over the world’s main supplies of oil was on the minds of US war planners. The fact was just “disappeared.” Each war for oil was wholly disconnected from the known plans to control the region’s oil sources by 9/11 deniers across the US political spectrum.

Far from being “conspiracy nuts”, inquisitive minds are asking why the establishment Left has abandoned the entirely logical conclusions that result from weighing the pronouncements of spokesmen for the American elite like Brzezinksi and the Neocon ‘Project for a New American Century’. Pronouncements that prescribed a catastrophic event to rally the masses, to convince them to beat their ploughshares into swords and join in the slaughter, or rather, do the slaughter for those who would benefit the most. By dismissing all inquisition of the 9/11 myth as “conspiracy theory”, the Left fails, and condemns us all to further atrocities in the name of a ‘sacred holocaust’;

...a defining opposition within America has emerged—between those who worship armed force, national supremacy, and money rewards, and those who know better. For the fanatic armies of the imperial God, 9/11 is their sacred holocaust to justify anything—continuous war crimes against third-world peoples, militarization of public wealth, life-blind despoliation of the world’s environment, obscene inequality and unprecedented corruption in high places, and cumulative suppression of democratic dissent at home and abroad.

Beyond the considerations of geopolitical realities of 9/11, the facilitation of terror as an ideological and practical tool is covered in depth by Daniele Ganser and Ola Tunander in their respective essays, The Strategy of Tension in the Cold War Period and The War on Terror and the Pax Americana. Ganser presents evidence that Western democracies have engaged in acts of terror defined as a ‘Strategy of Tension’ to psychologically manipulate domestic populations into following a direction desired by Superpower elites. Specifically, Ganser cites the case of Gladio in Italy, a secret army beyond normal democratic control, that is linked to right-wing extremists who committed acts of terror, and blamed the terrorist acts on Anarchists and Leftists. Gladio, and many other secret armies were allegedly set up to perform covert warfare in the case of a Soviet invasion. However, it seems that the secret armies were also used to create ‘swings to the right’ in public opinion to disenfranchise Leftist political parties and organizations. Although this policy is strenuously denied by the Western democracies involved, Ganser makes a compelling case that it did indeed happen as he speculates, and by applying that logic to the event of 9/11, it can be seen how ‘Strategy of Tension’ could be applied as a template to the events of 9/11 for a ‘swing to retaliation’, a psychological response to facilitate Empire.

Tunander explores historical ideological precedents that justify the use of terror tactics as legitimate tools. Tunander examines examples of states seizing opportunity in the wake of terrorist attacks to mobilize military actions that would otherwise be considered too ‘extreme’ for the citizenry. He notes the relations between some terrorists and intelligence-agencies, and briefly examines the history of Osama bin Laden, Carlos the Jackal and Omar Saeed Sheikh, all three of which benefited from covert and open associations with intelligence shops. Tunander cites the writings of the neglected Carl Schmitt, (Schmitt is not neglected by the Neocons, just a large quantity of other researchers), sometimes referred to as the ‘Crown Jurist of the 3rd Reich’;

The activities of the US in Italy during the Cold War resemble what the Turkish military elite might describe as the correction of the course of democracy by the “deep state,” or what some call the “fine tuning” of democracy. This “deep state”—what Carl Schmitt called the “sovereign”—may raise the “security temperature” through the use of “indiscriminate terrorism:” bombings in public squares to make people trade freedom for security. Indeed, fear of bomb attacks has an enormous psychological impact on people, persuading them to turn to the state for protection and channeling their anger and fear against a perceived enemy. In the event of such attacks, the mass media often respond hysterically, blaming whomever the authorities claim to have been responsible. Such an instrument is thus ideal for calibrating government policy—that is, “fine tuning” democratic politics and “securitizing” issues that were formerly open to public debate, bringing the democratic political sphere more in line with the political vision of the “sovereign.” Most important is the exercise of control over domestic politics in a way that could not be achieved through legal means.

Schmitt and Strauss are the primary wellsprings that inform Neoconservative ideology. Deceptive, and deeply Machiavellian, this brutal mindset is what anyone who would oppose it, is actually up against. Frank and open discussion on this thought process is urgently needed. “Going along to get along” doesn’t mean much when you could be cashiered at any point along the way for expediency.

This gagging of discussion is the primary focus of Morgan Reynolds’ chapter. Reynolds’ faced the derision of the President of Texas A&M University, Robert Gates, after suggesting, quite openly, that 9/11 was an inside job, a False Flag operation facilitated by the current administration. Reynolds is professor emeritus at A&M.

This condemnation of Reynolds’ freedom of inquiry into 9/11 stands in stark contrast to the principles of Texas A&M, and Reynolds reveals much about the history of Gates as a former head of the CIA in an effort to understand why it is that Gates would stand so adamantly against freewheeling inquiry into the exact nature of the events of 9/11. Reynolds exposes Gates as a gatekeeper of the Right;

With the present essay I hope to encourage more academics across the land to come forward and not be intimidated by colleagues, boards of trustees, or presidents, who, like Robert Gates, appear less interested in the truth than in protecting the powers that be.

The closing chapter by Peter Phillips (FM-ST911) with Bridget Thornton and Celeste Volger, Parameters of Power in the Global Dominance Group: 9/11 & Election Irregularities in Context, answers the question, cui bono?

The short answer is, the American ruling class. The long answer is: a connected system of “corporate, military and government elites ‘in a centralized power structure motivated by class interests and working in unison through “higher circles” of contact and agreement.”

Phillips delineates this further with the acronym HCPE, (higher-circle policy elite), people that arguably decide matters of the greatest import in the United States. Phillips explains the bipartisan nature of the HCPE;

The HCPE within both major political parties tend to seek to maintain US world military power. Both political parties cooperate by encouraging Congress to protect US business interests abroad and corporate profits at home. To better maintain defense contractors’ profits, Clinton’s Defense Science Board called for a globalized defense industry, obtained through mergers of defense contractors with transnational companies, which would became partners in the maintenance of US military readiness.

Further, the HCPE has a GDG (Global Dominance Group), which as its name suggests, seeks Global Hegemony, economic and military;

We believe that by identifying the most important policy advocates and those corporate heads who have the most to gain from a global dominance policy, we can begin to establish the parameters of the individuals involved in the Global Dominance Group (GDG) among the HCPE. Knowing the general parameters of the GDG will provide an understanding of who had the means, opportunity, and motive to have initiated a post-9/11 acceleration of neoconservative military expansion toward the goal of assuming full spectrum military dominance of the world. Understanding the parameters of the GDG will also allow researchers to explore the possibilities of insider preknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and the possibility that mercenaries working in conjunction with small elements of the GDG may have helped facilitate the events on September 11, 2001. These are classic sociological questions of who wins and who loses within class structures, policy processes, and state decision-making. In this study, we are not seeking to identify people involved in specific acts before or after 9/11. Rather we seek to understand the sociological phenomena of who, as collective actors the GDG within the HCPE, had the motive, means, and opportunity to gain from and perhaps facilitate such events.

Phillips and his co-writers further delineate the companies which have undoubtedly benefited in major ways from GDG policies, putting a face on those who have capitalized on the after effects of 9/11; Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton and The Carlyle Group for starters.

This type of analysis is desperately needed and welcome.

Overall, Intellectuals Speak Out is yet another triumph for the independent researcher of 9/11. Following quickly on the landmark “Hidden History of 9-11-2001” and Barrie Zwicker’s brilliant “Towers of Deception”, Griffin and Scott continue with a superb collection of tangible data, penetrating analysis, and historical context that carries the level of scholarship regarding 9/11 skepticism forward.